With a little over a week to go before the start of the NBA regular season, teams, especially their coaches, have the unenviable task of cutting players. The league only allows a maximum of 16 players with guaranteed contracts and 15 on the roster.
The Los Angeles Lakers are one of them. Currently with 17 players on their preseason roster, head coach Luke Walton and his staff will be sitting down soon and decide who to let go.
One player hoping to make the team beyond the exhibition games is former fifth overall pick of the 2012 draft, Thomas Robinson. The Kansas product has bounced around the league and now tries to find a home with the Lakers.
The amount of work he has put in this training camp has not gone unnoticed as Walton has had nothing but good things to say about him.
Per Mark Medina of the Orange County Register:
“He never takes plays off. He’s a great guy. You want him around. He’s a monster on the offensive glass and has a great attitude with everything we’ve done.”
“The way he was working and the way he was winning, we thought we at least have to bring this guy to camp. He looks great out here.”
Even if he has already played for six different teams in only five years in the league, Robinson does not dwell on what happened to him in the past and only focuses on the task at hand and that is to crack the team's final roster. He even joked that it was just his luck playing with him and due to business decisions of teams wanting to cut some salaries, he became always became the odd-man out. But he never held any grudges on the teams he played for:
“Just my luck.”
“Early on when I got traded, it probably was. But after the second time being traded, it’s just a business. It’s never been anything personal. When you get older, things don’t bother you as much.”
“I’m just trying to be who I am as a player. Those are exactly the things Coach said.”
It appears as if the Lakers will ultimately decide between Robinson and Yi Jianlian for the final roster spot. Should the team take the Chinese superstar, it will not be the end of the road for Robinson.
This preseason games can be considered his audition for future openings NBA teams might have, and with the praises Luke Walton has given him, it won't be surprising that he remains in the league. Whether with the Lakers or not is anybody's guess at this point, but the wait won't be long as the final list of players should be made available in the next few days.
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